All The Perfumes Of Arabia

2013

Lady Macbeth's monologue in Act V, scene 1 is part of literary history. It is a complex piece of writing: a harrowing reminder of the human condition and of an individual who has crossed an unspoken boundary and is staring into the abyss of her own tragedy.

I had been toying with the idea of working with it for a while, concentrating on the development of a single piece of work. I could never understand why I found it impossible to actually construct anything, until I realised that my fascination with these verses was linked to my fascination for the narrative process itself. It is so that this ensemble was born, with each piece being not only a representation a particualr line from that monologue but also the embodiment of questions about the nature and machinations of narrative:

How do we tell stories? How do we read them?

The book is often the primary storytelling medium and I wanted to capture the moment of appropriation of a narrative that occurs through the contemplative yet physical act of reading. Illustration ("Hell is Murky") is probably the first thing we appropriate as children, colouring in the pages and, in our mind, filling the gaps between our imagination and the written word. With appropriation also come misquoted and misplaced lines. They don't diminish the authenticity of the narrative. They are only testimony to its eternal journey. (The words "Unsex me now" are a distortion of "Unsex me here", a Lady Macbeth line but from another monologue much earlier in the play).

Gesture is also a central protagonist of any memorable story-telling, and the first neckpiece ("The old man... so much blood in him") wants to be a gruesome reminder that so much blood is shed in the play – and by King Duncan himself – that we can nearly taste it.

But the gestural would be greatly diminished by the absence of costume, and the second neckpiece ("What's done cannot be undone") aims to be the prop that can portray a character simply through visual impact. And, as a strong believer in serendipity, I feel narrative itself blessed the conclusion of the project when the main component, a piece of completely vitrified wire wool suggestive of a fatal stab wound, crashed on the floor just before mounting and broke in half, bringing a sublime moment of closure to the lines it was meant to represent.

The objects in this ensemble are all physically wearable, either by the reader/listener or by the book/story itself. From the sombre to the purely theatrical, they are my own reflection on the power of storytelling.